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Chicago Tribune: Roger Moore
Some movies are more of a shared experience than others, and that's certainly the case with "Paranormal Activity," a micro-budget horror flick about things that go bump in the you-know-what in a nice new home. It's opening in select college towns, midnight-only showings, in a handful of theaters. The combination of the late hour and the horror-jazzed audience could make this minimalist chill-fest the new "Blair Witch Project," or so Paramount hopes. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of "Where the Wild Things Are." Not since Robert Altman took on "Popeye" a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, from the moment in the prologue at which director Spike Jonze freezes the action (Max, fork in hand, tearing after the family dog) to the final scene's hard-won reconnection between Max and his mother at the kitchen table. Warner Bros. Pictures should be applauded for such a nervy and breathtaking achievement - the rare adaptation that goes deeper, not dumber, in its page-to-screen translation of a children's classic. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"Why was I, a conventional Twickenham schoolgirl, running round London nightclubs with a con man?" British journalist Lynn Barber asks herself this question in her memoir, published earlier this year. The question has now led to a movie, which answers Barber's query in its own genial, highly enjoyable way. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
A year from now you won't remember "Couples Retreat" either. It's a commodity made to be consumed, not remembered, and if Vince Vaughn could help make "Four Christmases" a success, he may well get audiences to down this one too. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"Good Hair" consists of two documentaries braided together, one enjoyable, the other enjoyable and provocative. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"A Serious Man" is a tart, brilliantly acted fable of life's little cosmic difficulties, a Coen brothers comedy with a darker philosophical outlook than "No Country for Old Men" but with a script rich in verbal wit. This time it's God - or chance, or fate with a grudge against the Minneapolis suburbs - wielding the stun gun. The most we can do, the film implies, is stick to our principles and hope for the best. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
At this point in our relationship, Michael Moore's documentaries and I have reached an impasse. I want Moore to make movies that figure out ways to get those who hate him, or don't trust him, to think twice about what he's going on about. Moore, on the other hand, isn't concerned with persuading his opponents of anything beyond their own opposition to Michael Moore. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Kenneth Turan
It's always risky to mix sports metaphors, but it's hard to resist the notion that the basketball-themed "More Than a Game" is a knockout of a sports documentary. Destined to be known as "the LeBron James movie," it is all that, and a good deal more. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
In the world according to "The Invention of Lying," truth rules because no one has thought of the alternative. Bus advertisements for Coke keep it short and simple ("It's very famous"). First encounters are brutal affairs ("Hi. I'm threatened by you"), full of small talk and the sort of thing typically kept inside one's head. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
The whip is a slingshot-type maneuver in roller derby, where you're flung by a teammate straight into traffic and, with luck, past it. Raquel Welch got whipped a time or two in the 1972 vehicle "Kansas City Bomber," but in that film roller derby wasn't about athletic prowess or female empowerment; it was just an excuse for shoving Welch into one ogled, manhandled situation after another. more |
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